Berry Gordy – Photo: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Critics Choice Association
Berry Gordy was given the Icon Award on the Critics Choice Awards Celebration of Black Television and Film, which occurred in Los Angeles on December 5.
Billy Dee Williams and Suzanne de Passe offered the award to the Motown legend. Williams performed Gordy within the TV Series The Jacksons: An American Dream. In the movie world, Gordy directed Mahogony, starring Diana Ross. Gordy took over the movie course after British filmmaker Tony Richardson was dismissed from the movie. Mahogany stars Ross as Tracy Chambers, a pupil who rises to turn out to be a dressmaker in Italy. The soundtrack included the one “Theme from Mahogany (Do You Know Where You’re Going To),” which peaked at No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in January 1976.
Gordy was concerned in plenty of movies over the course of his profession, together with The Last Dragon, The Wiz, Lady Sings the Blues, Hitsville: The Making of Motown, The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings, Diana!, and Goin’ Back to Indiana.
In a clip that aired in the course of the ceremony, Gordy mirrored on his strategy to movie, saying, “When I moved to Los Angeles I wanted to evolve into something more than just a record man. It was all motivated by the fact that I wanted my artists to experience every aspect of entertainment because I was feeling that there was no limit to where they could go as well.”
Back in October, Berry Gordy and Smokey Robinson had been introduced as honorees on the 2023 MusiCares Persons of the Year. The thirty second annual profit gala will happen on the Los Angeles Convention Center on February 3, 2023, two nights earlier than the sixty fifth annual Grammy Awards.
“MusiCares is thrilled to be honoring Berry Gordy and Smokey Robinson at this year’s Persons of the Year gala, which will be the first time we are honoring two legends together,” says Laura Segura, government director of MusiCares. “With Mr. Gordy as the creator of the Motown Sound, and Mr. Robinson as his first writer and artist, their music, along with the many others who joined Motown, reached out across a racially-divided country to transform popular music, creating a musical legacy like no other.”
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